Flowers for Algernon

“But when will you come back?”

“I don’t know-yet. But before I go, I want you to have this.”

“A magazine?”

“Not exactly. It’s a scientific report I wrote. Very 186 technical. Look, it’s called The Algernon-Gordon Effect. Something I discovered, and it’s named partly after me. I want you to keep a copy of the report so that you can show people that your son turned out to be more than a dummy after all.”

She took it and looked at it in awe. “It’s… it’s your name. I knew it would happen. I always said it would happen someday. I tried everything I could. You were too young to remember, but I tried. I told them all that you’d go to college and become a professional man and make your mark in the world. They laughed, but I told them.”

She smiled at me through tears, and then a moment later she wasn’t looking at me any more. She picked up her rag and began to wash the woodwork around the kitchen door, humming-more happily, I thought-as if in a dream. The dog started barking again. The front door opened and closed and a voice called: “Okay, Nappie. Okay, it’s me.” The dog was jumping excitedly against the bedroom door.

I was furious at being trapped here. I didn’t want to see Norma. We had nothing to say to each other, and I didn’t want my visit spoiled. There was no back door. The only way would be to climb out the window into the back yard and go over the fence. But someone might mistake me for a burglar. As I heard her key in the door, I whispered to my mother-I don’t know why-“Norma’s home.” I touched her arm, but she didn’t hear me. She was too busy humming to herself as she washed the woodwork. The door opened. Norma saw me and frowned. She didn’t recognize me at first=it was dim, the lights hadn’t been turned on. Putting down the shopping bag she was carrying, she switched on the light. “Who are you?…” But before I could answer, her hand went over her mouth, and she slumped back against the door.

“Charlie!” She said it the same way my mother had, gasping. And she looked the way my mother used to look-thin, sharp features, birdlike, pretty. “Charliel My God, what a shockl You might have gotten in touch and warned me. You should have called. I don’t know what 187 to say.. “ She looked at my mother, sitting on the floor near the sink. “Is she all right? You didn’t shock her or anything… ”

“She came out of it for a while. We had a little talk.”

“I’m glad. She doesn’t remember much these days. It’s old age-senility. Dr. Portman wants me to put her into a nursing home, but I can’t do it. I can’t stand to think of her in one of those institutions.” She opened the bedroom door to let the dog out, and when he jumped and whined joyously, she picked him up and hugged him. “I just can’t do that to my own mother.” Then she smiled at me uncertainly. “Well, what a surprise. I never dreamed. Let me look at you. I never would have recognized you. I’d have passed you by in the street. So different.” She sighed. “I’m glad to see you, Charlie.”

“Are you? I didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”

“Oh, Charlie!” She took my hands in hers. “Don’t say that. I am glad to see you. I’ve been expecting you. I didn’t know when, but I knew someday you’d come back. Ever since I read that you had run away in Chicago.” She pulled back to look up at me. “You don’t know how I’ve thought about you and wondered where you were and what you were doing. Until that professor came here last when was it? last March? just seven months ago?-I had no idea you were still alive. She told me you died in Warren. I believed it all these years. When they told me you were alive and they needed you for the experiment, I didn’t know what to do. Professor… Nemur?-is that his name?-wouldn’t let me see you. He was afraid to upset you before the operation. But when I saw in the papers that it worked and you had become a genius — oh, my!-you don’t know what it felt like to read about that.